The Power of idioms to help tell a story

Word phrases age and accumulate a kind of wisdom, just as people do.

Is life a crap shoot, good or bad fortune, without rhyme or reason? I don’t think so. Sometimes, stars align. This is the story of two ordinary people who experienced that in their golden years.

A Hair’s Breadth

We almost didn’t happen. Fifteen years ago, on Christmas morning, I was scrolling through saved eHarmony matches, deleting those outside my arbitrary 300-mile limit that the dating site had ignored. I had easily expunged a trio from Chicago, just a smidgen under my restriction.

MapQuest — remember that ancient mapping service — told me Rebecca lived a long way, most definitely not a stone’s throw, unless you’re Roberto Clemente.

Yet, she was different. There was a sparkle in her eye in the photo with the dog in her lap. I liked her face, hair, and smile. Today, she says there was no picture of her standing in the ocean with her grandson, Ilan. Maybe I imagined her legs, but I don’t think so.

All the profiles said their authors “enjoyed reading” because that was one of my “preferences.” Rebecca was specific, including what she was currently reading, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life. Of course, I wasn’t reading Che, but I liked that she was. It was an intriguing tell.

However, her Clarinda home was 323 miles from my Decorah home. My right index finger moved the mouse cursor to the delete button…and I heard “Merry Christmas.”

My visiting mother had poked her head through the kitchen door. “How did you sleep?” I replied.

Later in the day, when the dust had settled, I wrote Rebecca a first email on the eHarmony secret highway. I wish I’d copied it. When I wrote it, I had no idea of its historical value. A week later, she replied with something along the lines of Let’s give this a try and see where it goes.

So, my mother’s intrusion into my musing helped bring Rebecca and me together. Who’d a thunk?

Eyes Wide Open

A couple of months later, our first date was in Ames, Iowa, roughly halfway between our homes, the orange circle on the map. I suggested Panera Bread, as they let people sip endless cups of coffee.

The second photo has been duplicated many times, from our first use of these large backpacks in Italy in 2018. Now they are our go-to suitcases, and they do fit in the airplane overhead compartment.

I’ve always thought the image represented what two sixty-year-olds carried into a relationship. “He comes with baggage” — a metaphor and NOT an idiom, you knew that, dear reader — about the issues someone brings with them. Maybe fear of commitment or some addiction.

However, baggage, to us, has always meant, well, what we carry with us that we need. For example, at that first meeting, not more than thirty minutes into our initial conversation, Rebecca said, “My former husband lives in my basement.” Someday, I’ll write the rest of that story. Rich died last October.

Below is a photo of the Wiese family in April this year at his burial. That’s me in the gray sweater in the middle. The rest are members of my partner’s extended family.

They all — three children, three spouses, seven grandchildren, Rich’s sister and spouse, one of Rebecca’s brothers and wife, fit comfortably inside her red backpack. As does Rebecca’s Clarinda home.

And friends. Who have become my buddies.

My black pack is complete as well, with my son, former wife (who lives four blocks from us in Decorah), friends, and house.

Today, we live most of the time in what has become our home in Decorah.We’ve traveled back and forth over the years, usually together, those 323 miles by my estimate, over 200 times.

Occasionally, when we’re packing for our next trip, one of us will ask if they can put a book, sweater, or pair of shoes in the other’s pack.

Of course, we say, we’ll need them for the journey.

A few weeks ago, I watched an 85-year-old Jack Nicklaus slowly bend over to put a tee in the ground. He was an honorary starter at the Masters Golf tournament, which he won six times.

I thought about Jack as I leaned over to take this photo after first stretching my hamstrings. I’m a decade younger and just purchased my first pair of slip-on shoes. I’m almost afraid to say “they feel like slippers.” I’ve never worn slippers.

But they do.

Worse, they work. Meaning, without hinging, I slip my left foot in, then my right, and start walking without tying the shoelaces.

Ye Gods! Aren’t codger shoes supposed to have straps?

And what happened to my grandmother’s ugly, fabric-stuffed rocking chair?

It’s almost like there’s a conspiracy to make aging cool.

Then, everyone will want to join us.

Even Presidents.

A Lifetime Experience in Namibia

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Are you bored?

Will this be a mission trip?

Why?

When we told friends and family about our upcoming two-week trip to Namibia, these were the responses we received the most. Rebecca and I are in our mid-seventies, and six months ago, when our friend Brian Hesse, owner and guide of Cowabunga Safaris, said he had two slots open for his Namibia safari, we said, “It’s now or never.” And, immediately, began second-guessing.

In the last decade, we’ve visited Malta, Ireland, Northern Ireland, England, Morocco, Croatia, France, Romania (three times), the Czech Republic, and Mexico. But not sub-Saharan Africa.

We understood our friends’ bafflement. Our eyes were as closed to the possibilities of this experience as mine were in the first photo.

When asked today about our Namibia excursion, our response is as clear as the Namibian sky.

It was an experience of a lifetime. These ingredients are what made it so.

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Brian and Donovan

On our travels, leaders— Mohammed in Morocco, Michael in Northern Ireland, Stephen in Ireland, and Sergiu in Romania — all provided excellent context, helping us understand what we were observing. Guides are teachers, and their countries serve as their classrooms.

In Namibia, Brian and Donovan joined this litany of excellent mentors.

Brian teaches Political Science at Northwest Missouri State. He brought 30 years of experience in shepherding groups through several countries in southern Africa. His daily energy was infectious. I don’t recall a single question about an animal, plant, or geological formation that he could not answer. He truly made Namibia come alive.

Donovan is a Damara and earned a degree in tourism at the University of Namibia in Windhoek. His mother named him after the British rock star Donovan Leitch. Here he is scouting a herd of elephants with a newborn calf.

It’s not as easy as you would think to find an elephant family that is protective of a new member.

As we were observing this scene from our van, I noticed Donovan paying close attention to the bull, the large elephant in the center. “I’m watching his ears. If they begin to flap, that means he believes danger is close and I’m getting us out of here.”

‘Good Guides Attract Good People’

This is our intrepid group on Namibia’s Atlantic Skeleton Coast, halfway through our 13 days. When we gathered early in the morning on the first day, Brian anointed us Cowabunga. By this point, the adventurous spirit bound us together, even the introverts.

The age range was 14 to 75. It proved true what I read on the testimonial page of the Cowabunga site. Good guides do attract good people, over and over again. Several members of our group had previously visited Tanzania with Brian.

For two weeks, our hearty band of 12 ate together, traveled in two comfortable vans on some very bumpy Namibian roads, thoroughly enjoying each other’s company.

As this was the first time they had worked together, I asked Donovan what he liked about pairing with Brian. “It’s the energy, every day, without fail.”

Cowabunga!

Chills

I thought I was too old.

I’ve seen a giraffe in a Zoo. But never in her backyard.

If there’s water, they will come.

Donovan, “A Black rhino footprint.”

And the rest of him.

Questions

What are these phenomena I’ve never seen before?

A termite mound. Tonight we’ll eat mushrooms nurtured by the moisture at their base. Really. It’s decades old. You’re right, it does feel like concrete. I think I get it. These communities are integral to Namibia’s arid ecosystem.

A social weaver bird nest. It can contain hundreds of apartments for this sociable bird and weigh up to a ton. It is an intricate hut with three levels, designed to protect its inhabitants from occasional rain showers and predators, particularly snakes.

The backdoors are accessible only through the air.

Wow.

Namibia: The Gift of Awe

As a child, I remember coming upon a squirrel that had been hit by a car. I wanted to turn away as its little body was still moist and bleeding. But I didn’t because I had never seen the insides of a creature. I guess I was awestruck by something new.

At 75, this Namibian safari has reignited a sense of wonder, which comes from seeing new things or old things in a new context.

There are so many mysteries in this vast world.

It’s easy to sit on our thrones and think we are the center of the universe.

Namibia reminded me that I am but a small part of something much larger.

My ego shrank, while my imagination soared. And I made new friends, of all sizes and species.

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Note to the reader: When we returned from Namibia, I Googled “Awe” and discovered Dacher Keltner’s Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life. (Amazon). It’s an excellent book written for a general audience.

THIS STORY WAS PUBLISHED IN MEDIUM’S THE CHALLENGED.

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Stephen Dalton asks us to find a current match for the cruel remark about commoners, “Let them eat cake,” allegedly by France’s last queen, Marie Antoinette, before the French Revolution in 1789. Marie may or may not have said this, but it stuck because of her indifference to the plight of those in France who didn’t share her unearned good fortune of being born into the royal family.

Unfortunately, in the America of Donald Trump and MAGA, where cruelty reigns and is the point, there are plenty of examples. (source)

Doubly unfortunate, for citizens of my state, Iowa, Joni Ernst, one of our Senators, served a main dish of heartlessness, which she then followed a day later with a dessert of fecklessness.

You can read a terrific article about both here.

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I appreciate Stephen’s prompt because an equally powerful antidote of compassion must counter every thoughtless cruelty. That’s why I am giving no oxygen inside my story to the stupidities of Senator Ernst. For that’s what cruelty is, ignorance interwoven with indifference.

However, I will tell you a little about Chantel, whose hand is featured in the first photo. She was our guide a week ago on a Living Desert tour in Namibia’s Namib Desert.

Before our group of ten emptied into the desert, Chantel asked us to follow her in a single file. As you can see, it took us a couple of tries and gentle reminders before we synced with her plea to remember that everything under our feet is a home to some animal.

Like the sand gecko in the first photo. And the Namaqua chameleon pictured below.

Upon meeting us, Chantel fist-bumped each, explaining that the oils on our hands would put the animals she touched at risk of their predators, using the phrase she learned two decades ago from Tommy, her mentor:

Anything can be anywhere or not.

It’s difficult to separate the children of immigrants from their parents if you hold the meaning of this sentence in your heart. Or cut America’s Medicaid program (health care for the poor and their children) to give tax cuts to the wealthy, or utter Ernst’s inanities.

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THIS STORY WAS WRITTEN FOR THE MEDIUM PUBLICATION THE CHALLENGED.

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All my life, I’ve been a good little boy. That’s almost 76 years of niceness. Do you know what that does to a person?

Of course, there was that time when, in 8th grade, for some long-forgotten reason, I slugged Tommy Grayden in the back of the classroom. But, me being me, I looked for Tommy at our 60th reunion to apologize. It turns out he had died the year before of a heart attack. Naturally, I felt guilty.

I’ve always wanted to be more forceful, like the tennis shoe lady in the first photo. I’ll bet she never suffered fools. Spoke her mind. Instead, I’m like her partner, who sits there contentedly, after a day of pleasing people.

Like my Medium friend Vidya Sury, Collecting Smiles, who asks us to write about a bad habit we would like to lose.

Who could turn down Vidya?

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Between you and me, I’ve always wanted to be like this fella. And not just because of the apparent reason, though that’s not irrelevant.

I’m guessing he would be someone truly worthy of Vidya’s prompt, like Nick, a high school friend my father wouldn’t let me hang out with. You knew these yobs, smoking after school in the grove of trees across the football practice field. The guys who always had a date on Friday night. Who strode down the teenage hallways and byways with confidence and purpose, knowing they were the true king of the jungle. And grew up to be the man with the swag in the painting.

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Two weeks ago, I made a new friend. His name is John, and he was one of twelve in a Namibian safari group.

Everyone liked John, including our two leaders, even though on at least two occasions he put his rhino-like foot down and said we needed to do things a little differently. One involved the number of stretch breaks we were taking on the gravel and rut-filled Namibian roads, and the other whether we would eat our lunch in the van or on the side of the road.

“I need a flat surface to eat, what’s our hurry?” said John to guide Brian about three days into our two-week journey.

Each time he did this, my stomach tightened, though I, too, wanted what he did.

I admired his honesty and willingness to risk the displeasure of those in charge, which never came.

In fact, by the end of the trip, John’s forthrightness became one of our tight group’s tropes.

“Was I too cantankerous?” John asked me on our last night, after I had confessed to him that I find it hard to do what he did.

“No,” I replied. “Everyone likes you, particularly those of us who are trying to break a habit of people pleasing.”

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THIS STORY WILL APPEAR IN MEDIUM’S THE DAILY CUPPA.

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That’s Rebecca and me last Saturday in the Namib Naukluft National Park between Swakomund and Solitaire, Namibia. It’s day ten of a two-week exploration of this beautiful southwest African country. 

We’re mid-seventies and reasonably well-traveled for our generation of Americans. For both of us, this was our first exposure to Sub-Saharan Africa. It was an experience of a lifetime that we’re just starting to absorb, that I will share with Medium readers in Namibian darkling beetle-sized chunks over the next few weeks.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we returned to the States, in two elephant-sized steps.

5,037 miles from Windhoek, Namibia, to Frankfurt, Germany, and 4,579 miles to St. Louis.

Twenty hours in the atmosphere and twelve in airport waiting areas. It only seemed like a black rhino’s 15-month gestation period.

We returned home wrinkled and enlivened.

 

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Deanna Bugalski 💋 asks what the next fifty years will look like.

How do you think about a half century?

If you’re in my age territory, 75, you’ve probably got images and stories that make time stand still, an illusion, of course.

Or, perhaps, not!

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That’s a bushy-haired, mustachioed, open-Oxford cloth-shirted me under the red arrow in the first photo. I’m with a group of mostly college students marching in protest, a few days after the killing of four students and the wounding of nine more by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University on May 4, 1970. The Kent State students themselves were part of a resistance against President Nixon’s expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. (Source)

The stern-looking older fellow in the foreground looks vaguely familiar. I’ll let him stand in for my father.

This is me eight days ago before a No Kings Day march objecting to, among other things, President Trump’s ordering the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles to quell the protests against his deportation policies. (Source). Evidently, I have one uniform for public outrage.

Here’s our northeast Iowa community’s resisters marching toward the Winneshiek County Courthouse.

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Two massive nationwide demonstrations of NO to a President, fifty-five years apart. 

As our No Kings group of about 1000 strode by a Mexican restaurant — one of hundreds in this MAGA dominant Red state — five Latino employees stood in a side door smiling and applauding.

As I looked at them, I recalled James Baldwin’s lament and call to action, from a half century ago, 

The horror is that America changes all the time without ever changing at all.

The next fifty years?

Protesters age out, Presidents accumulate, and the beneficiaries of reform perennially rise to be counted. I’m guessing that over five decades, our grandchildren will again and again and again assert their right to assemble in protest and petition to extend the Constitutional rights of all citizens to weaker neighbors preyed upon by the Confederate-Legacy demagogues and their supporters, who also refuse to go away.

So it goes.

THIS STORY WAS PUBLISHED ON MEDIUM.

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No day contains only one thing, even in our tiny neck of the woods in the middle of America. Yesterday, we woke to the horrific news of political assassinations in Minnesota, just to our north.

The man who executed Democratic State legislator Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, and wounded State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette, attacked all Americans. Assassination is an assault against our community life.

I believe in the possibility of public life, what we call politics. It’s not a pejorative word. It’s how we work through our differences, peacefully. For most of human history, the WE in charge was a singular figure, a Pharaoh, a Pope, or a King.

It was decidedly not The People.

So, in the afternoon, joining millions, and under the protection of the Constitution, we assembled, marched, spoke, and petitioned.

Against a President who is acting unlawfully.

A made-up strongman.

THIS STORY WAS WRITTEN FOR MEDIUM’S THE CHALLENGED.

A boy becomes a man, turtle step by turtle step, with the help of supervising adults, including the first, my mother, a task master if there ever was one.

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I worked paid jobs every summer from boyhood until I became a college professor at the age of 35, which included: delivering papers, scooping ice cream, managing a snack bar, frying burgers on a flat top grill, painting houses, sewing tents, gophering for forklift Frankie, laying cement, and selling encyclopedias.

And yard work, lots and lots of yard work, every adolescent summer on Thursdays. It was how my two brothers and I earned our allowance.

As I recall, in the fifties, in our middle-class neighborhood, every mother but one stayed at home. Women ran the neighborhood. Mrs. Weinswag complained to my mother over the phone about her wet newspaper, loud children, and Sam, our beagle, pooping in her yard. Mrs. Tate watched for daytime burglars from her front porch. Mrs. McMillan exposed the treehouse gang activities of Mark, Vinnie, and me. Unmarried Miss Browner puttered in her garden and never said a word. Mrs. Barten let us ride our bikes down the little hill in her backyard.

Next door neighbors Timmy and Jimmy’s mom worked somewhere, which meant that after Wiffle ball games we played on a makeshift diamond in the driveway we shared, we’d go into their kitchen and grab candy bars from a drawer.

Can you imagine a treasure trove of Snickers, Three Musketeers, and Milky Way bars, available anytime you want? One day, I brought one home and showed it to Mom. She took it and said, “I don’t want it to ruin your lunch. Besides, it’s Thursday and time to mow right field.”

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This was my childhood home. The people who bought the property when Mom, at 95, went into a memory care unit, replaced the grass lawn with this monstrosity, I assume, because they didn’t want to mow.

Around the back, there’s a two-level yard divided by a stone wall. The top part of the property included a garage, flower beds, and a line of bushes that served as the outfield fence. The bottom sported a patio made of flat concrete slabs, which my dad rebuilt many times, surrounded by additional garden plots. My little brothers Peter and Pat weeded the beds. I cut the grass.

It was my Dad who showed me the rope technique he used for the front lawn. He tied a lengthy cord to the green Lawnboy handle so that he could pull the mower up and down the terrace. The first time I tried it, I shredded the cord on the first downward pass. It was a Thursday, so he was at work.

Mom was overseeing Peter’s and Pat’s weeding in the backyard. Impatiently, she said

It’s your job, Paul. Figure it out.

If I discarded the cord and mowed crossways, would I and the mower tumble into the street and be run over by the milkman?

We didn’t, so when I finished, I pushed the mower to the backyard where Mom was patrolling the fence line, hands on hips, looking over their shoulders, and barking weed commands.

My first boss.

A few years later, my second chief, Wendall Ginsberg, owner of a Baskin-Robbins ice cream outlet, said on my official first day, after a week of scoop training

Paul, wherever you are in the store, I will see you.

I knew exactly what he meant.

Please Come Along for the ride

THIS STORY WAS WRITTEN FOR MEDIUM’S CROWS FEET.

From the photo, you can guess how this tale ends. Buying a car is like making sausage. The product looks good, but you don’t want to see the rest of the story.

However, this is a fun ride. Come on along. By the way, I played the silent chorus in this four-act drama.

Act I: Homework

“You need to take a man with you. Those car dealers in Omaha are slick and they will take advantage of you,” said a well-meaning septuagenarian banker to Rebecca 15 years ago when she told him about her quest to purchase a new red Mazda3 sedan.

Of course, she didn’t take a man. Instead, she did her homework and went into the dealership prepared to negotiate. When she drove into the lot in a muffler-challenged Ford Pinto, another older guy offered, in a friendly, patronizing voice, “Oh, I see you brought us a hot rod.”

Three hours later, the younger male salesperson commended her, saying, “You did your homework, so I have no problem with this deal that works out for both of us. Too many people come in unprepared. You didn’t.”

Yesterday, she traded in her beloved Mazda3 with 116,000 miles for the Mazda CX-50 Hybrid you see in the photo. Two weeks of preparation had led her to a bottom line of $28,000, including the trade-in.

Act II: The Car

On the hour drive to the dealership, Rebecca summarized her thinking: “I want a Hybrid and I’m ready to give up the stick shift. I’m 73 and want one less thing to think about while driving. The CX is larger and safer, and the reviews are generally positive. Let’s see how this goes.”

The day before, Rebecca had called and set up a 9:00 a.m. appointment. Mason met us as we walked through the door. He led us to his cubicle and asked if we wanted to take the car around the block. To our left was a service counter, and right, two display cars, a ping pong table, cornhole board and bean bags, waiting area with coffee machines and a bowl of apples, and four or five desks, all with customers. It was a busy Saturday morning.

It looked like all the salespeople were young men, with the lone exception of an older man who was missing his left hand and deftly used it to balance his phone. In a glassed-in corner office, a young woman sat across from a couple, with paperwork strewn across her desk. I assumed she was the business manager.

Mason handed Rebecca the key and walked us outside to introduce the car. These days, auto dashboards resemble the Star Trek Enterprise. Our Scotty gave us just enough information to feel comfortable.

Behind the wheel, Rebecca took us for a fifteen-minute ride. She was particularly interested in noise level and the feel of the steering. Was it tight or loose?

Act III: The Negotiation

As the late sportscaster Keith Jackson used to say after witnessing a great play, “Oh, Nellie.”

Ninety minutes later, I realized I had witnessed a master at work.

After the test drive, Rebecca and I sat in the car for twenty minutes. Mason, wise beyond his years, left us to our own devices, which we used to Google various questions and discuss what we had experienced.

The two main criteria, noise and steering feel, clearly got passing grades. I asked Rebecca what she thought about the car’s visibility, my number one criterion when I purchased my Subaru Forester. “Not quite as good as your car, but much better than the Mazda3.”

As we settled across from our newest, young friend, Rebecca had decided on three things: she liked the car, $28,000 was her bottom line, and she wanted the weekend to think it over.

She and Mason talked over the purchase details, interspersed with personal anecdotes. He seemed comfortable with a couple who could be his grandparents. Not all young people are. This was his second year selling cars, and Tom, his supervisor, “used to sit at this desk.”

When Rebecca and Mason hit that $28,000 wall, he said Let me run this by Tom. I thought about William Macy as Jerry Lundegaard in Fargo, chatting with his manager. We know how that turned out. But movies aren’t real life.

Tom introduced himself and put a piece of paper in front of Rebecca. He was an older, more forceful character than Mason. At first, I didn’t like him. It turns out Rebecca didn’t either. Both of us would change our minds.

The last line on the sheet was $30,000, with a $5,000 trade-in. Rebecca studied the offer and said, “I need $8000 for my 3.” Tom replied, “I can’t give you $8000, the software tells me it won’t work, we won’t be able to get more than $7200 on the lot.”

He continued, “Let me ask you this. Could I persuade you to buy the car today? If I can, maybe we can move the numbers closer to where you want them.”

If the bottom line is $28,000, I’ll pay cash today.

Rebecca had been saving for a new car for many years—she knows cash opens doors.

“Let me run some different numbers,” said Tom, and continued, “I love your little stick-shift car. We want that car on our lot.”

He came back with $28,500. “Good enough,” said Rebecca, as she extended her hand.

Act IV: The Denouement

When she finalized the purchase in the business manager’s office, Rebecca declined all the extended warranties offered by Sam, who now sat in the chair.

Mason, Tom, Sam, and Rebecca. While each acknowledged me, their eyes always focused on her. There was no outward sign of what was typical one generation ago, that it was the man who was in charge.

I’m guessing Rebecca’s granddaughters will find this circumstance the norm in their future big-ticket purchases.

As for their partners, they might enjoy simply being along for the ride while watching a master at work.